Renzi studied it coolly. "By this you may know that your days of unalloyed leisure on half-pay are now summarily concluded and you are, once again, to be an active sea officer. If I catch the implication correctly, Lord St Vincent has knowledge of your far voyaging and therefore is not sanguine as to your immediate availability for service. He directs you, however, to repair at once to Plymouth where, no doubt, the admiral will be pleased to employ you as he sees fit." He frowned. "Yet within there is no mention of the nature of your employment. I rather fancy you should be prepared for whatever the Good Lord—or the admiral—provides."
"Then we should clap on all sail an' set course f'r Plymouth, I believe!" exclaimed Kydd.
"Just so," said Renzi, quietly.
Cecilia's face set. "Nicholas, you're sadly indisposed. You need not go with Thomas."
With infinite gentleness Renzi turned to her. "Dear sister, but I do."
"Come!" The voice from inside the admiral's office was deep and authoritative.
Kydd entered cautiously as the flag-lieutenant intoned, "Commander Kydd, sir," then left, closing the door soundlessly after him.
Admiral Lockwood looked up from his papers, appraised Kydd for some seconds, then rose from his desk. He was a big man and, in his gold lace, powerfully intimidating. "Mr Kydd, I had been expecting you before now, sir. You're aware we'll be at war with Mr Bonaparte shortly?"
"Aye, sir," Kydd replied respectfully. It was not the navy way to offer excuses, whatever their merit.
"Hmm. The Admiralty seems to think well enough of you. Desires me to give you early employment." The gaze continued, considering, thoughtful.
"Now I can give you an immediate command"—Kydd's heart leapt—"in the Sea Fencibles. The whole coast from Exmouth to the Needles. Eighty miles, two hundred men. Immediate command! What do you say, sir?"
Kydd had no wish to take a passive role ashore with a body of enthusiastic amateurs and fishermen watching and waiting on the coast. He clung stubbornly to his hopes. "Er, that's very generous in ye, sir, but I had hoped f'r a—f'r a command at sea, sir."
"At sea!" Lockwood sighed. "As we all do, Mr Kydd." He came round the desk and stood before Kydd, legs braced as though on a quarterdeck. "You've come at it rather late for that. For weeks now I've had all the harum-scarum young bloods to satisfy and you as commander and not a lieutenant . . ."
It had come back to haunt Kydd yet again: as a lieutenant he could be put instantly in any one of the large number of cutters, brigs, armed schooners and the like, but as a commander only a sloop as befitting his rank would do. "Ah—I have it. Command? How do you feel about taking Brunswick, seventy-four, to the Leeward Islands, hey?"
A two-decker ship-of-the-line to the Caribbean? Kydd was dumbstruck. Was the admiral jesting? Where was the joke? Then he realised: the only way he could captain a seventy-four was if she was going to sail en flûte—all her guns removed to make room for troops and stores, a glorified transport, which would effectively remove him from the scene of action. "Sir, if y' please, I'd rather—"
"Yes, yes, I know you would, but almost everything that swims is in commission now. Don't suppose Volcano, fire-ship, appeals? No? Oh—I nearly forgot. Eaglet! Fine ship-sloop, in dock for repair. Confidentially, I rather fancy that, after the court meets, her present commander may find himself removed for hazarding his vessel and then we'll have to find somebody, hey?"
Kydd realised he had probably reached the end of the admiral's patience and, in any case, a ship-rigged sloop was an attractive proposition. "That would suit me main well, sir, I thank—"
"But then again . . ." Lockwood seemed to have warmed to him. His brow furrowed and he faced Kydd directly now. "It's only proper to tell you, Eaglet will be long in repair. There is one other in my gift—but again, to be fair, no one seems keen to take her. That's probably because she's a trifle odd in her particulars, foreign-built, Malta, I think. Now if you'd be—"
"Sir, her name's not—Teazer?"
"As it happens, yes. Do you know her?"
"Sir—I'll take her!"
CHAPTER 2
KYDD'S FACE WAS SORE from the spray whipping in with the dirty weather disputing every foot of Teazer's progress, but it bore an ecstatic smile as he braced against the convulsive movements of his ship.
It would be some time before they could be sure of clearing the Cherbourg peninsula in this veering sou'-sou'-easterly, but it would be an easier beat as they bore up for Le Havre. Kydd couldn't help but reflect that it was passing strange to be navigating to raise the enemy coast directly where he had every intention of anchoring and making contact with the shore.
Earlier, he had eagerly claimed his ship and set about preparing her for sea. Then, in the midst of the work, urgent orders had been hurried over from the admiral's office: it was His Majesty's intention to respond to the repeated provocations of Napoleon Bonaparte by "granting general reprisals against the ships, goods and subjects of the French Republic" within days. It would be the end of the fragile peace.
England planned to steal a march on Napoleon by declaring war first and any vessels, like Teazer, that could be spared were dispatched urgently to the north coast of France to take off British subjects fleeing the country before the gates slammed shut.
Teazer had put to sea within hours, terribly short-handed and with few provisions, little in the way of charts and aids to navigation, and neither guns nor powder. In the race against time she had left behind her boatswain, master and others, including Renzi, who was ashore acquiring some arcane book.
Still, miraculously, Kydd was at sea, in his own ship—and it was Teazer, bound for war. What more could he ask of life?
Warmly, he recalled the welcome from the standing officers who had remained with the vessel all the time he had been far voyaging; Purchet the boatswain, Duckitt the gunner, Hurst the carpenter. And, in a time of the hottest press seen that age, the imperturbable quartermaster Poulden had appeared on the dockside, followed some hours later by the unmistakable bulk of Tobias Stirk, who was accompanied by another, younger seaman.
"Thought as how Teazer might need us, Mr Kydd," Stirk had said, with a wicked grin, and pushed forward the young man. "An' has ye need of a fine topman as c'n hand, reef 'n' steer, fit t' ship aboard the barky?"
Kydd had grunted and sized the man up; in his early twenties he had the build and direct gaze of a prime deep-water sailor. Of course he would take him—but why was the man wearing a grin from ear to ear that just wouldn't go away? Then it dawned on him. "Ah! Do I see young Luke, b' chance?" The ship's boy of long ago in the Caribbean had grown and matured almost unrecognisably and was now Able Seaman Luke Calloway.
But as Stirk and Calloway were trusted men, Kydd had allowed them to go ashore and they were somewhere in the dockyard when he had sailed.
"Sir!" Teazer's only other officer, Kydd's first lieutenant, Hodgson, pointed astern. Twisting in his streaming oilskins Kydd saw the dark outlines of questing scouting frigates emerge through the blurred grey horizon and then, behind them, lines of great ships stretching away into the distance.
He caught his breath: this was Cornwallis and the Channel Fleet—ships-of-the-line on their way to clamp a blockade on the great port of Brest and thereby deny Napoleon the advantage of having his major men-o'-war at sea on the outbreak of hostilities. The grey silhouettes firmed; the stately seventy-fours passed by one after another, only two reefs in their topsails to Teazer's own close-reefed sail and disdaining to notice the little brig-sloop.